For example, [N.S.A.. Secretary Robert] Henderson's mother, Wilma Ellis,
is married to [N.S.A. member Firuz] Kazemzadeh. Ellis herself is a former
N.S.A. member who has held a variety of prominent Baha’i' i positions.
Currently she is a member of the Continental Board of Counselors of the
Americas, which provides advice and other services to elected Baha’i bodies
throughout the hemisphere. Two other current N.S.A. members are husband
and wife James and Dorothy Nelson. He is a former presiding judge of the
Los Angeles Municipal Court. She is a judge of California's Ninth Circuit
Court of Appeals. Two other members are Juana Conrad, a retired administrator
for the Los Angeles Municipal Courts, and William Davis, former administrative
executive of the Ninth Circuit Court. Yet another current assembly member
is South Dakotan Patricia Locke, the first American-Indian woman to serve
on the N.S.A.. She replaced her son Kevin Locke. [Michael] McMullen, University
of Houston sociologist, acknowledged that the prohibition against nominations
and campaigning has made it hard for those outside the Baha’i establishment
to win election to the N.S.A. But on the local level, he added, there is
a much higher leadership turnover. Moreover, on this level of authority,
he said, issues, even controversial ones, are freely debated without fear
of official disapproval. (Rifkin 1997 [misattributed to Cole]).

Baha’i critics of the system allege that electoral results are skewed
in three ways.

The National Spiritual Assembly enjoys all the advantages of incumbency,
controlling the image of incumbents in the national newspaper, The American
Baha'i (an organ of the N.S.A.), sending videotapes of the incumbents to
local communities, and sending members around to conferences, which enhances
their visibility (all this is paid for out of the national Baha'i fund).
These advantages of incumbency are especially efficacious in a system where
no campaigning for office by others is allowed. Second, they allege that
sitting members often promote close associates onto the body, “flying them
around to conferences,” appointing them to high-powered national committees,
and giving them prominence at important events (personal communication,
May, 1996). Since speaking openly about candidates is not allowed, subtle
non-verbal signals have taken on extreme importance for delegates, who
seem willing to be guided by the incumbents in these indirect ways. At
the very least, there is a widespread perception among some portions of
the community that such subtle signals from incumbents do form a sort of
nomination procedure. In the 1970s an African-American prominent in the
proselytization campaign in South Carolina said that:

he was asked if he wanted to be part of an orchestration of the N.S.A.
[National Spiritual Assembly] election. He said that it was understood
that the people that gained visibility when chosen to read prayers on the
big stage at national convention had been "blessed" by the powers that
be. He told them that he was not interested in being a prayer reader. (Talisman,
April 1996).

Obviously, launching a campaign for the N.S.A. involves rather more
than is indicated above, but this recollection does show how the semiotics
of prominence are thought by many to operate at the National Convention.
Third, some grassroots campaigns are launched by unannounced candidates
who go about the country giving talks. Such informal campaigning is generally
permitted as long as the candidate does not criticize the National Spiritual
Assembly, does not explicitly ask for votes, and waits patiently for a
slot to open up on that body. The National Spiritual Assembly occasionally
stops such grassroots campaigns by ordering the person’s talks cancelled,
or, if chairmanship of a national committee is becoming a platform for
popularity, by firing the individual (Anon. 1992). Conservative Baha’is
deny that there is any manipulation of elections, which they see as divinely
inspired.

Control Mechanisms and Sanctions

Baha’i leaders employ a number of important control mechanisms to shape
the speech and behavior of Baha’is. These include removal of voting rights,
shunning, demands for conformity, accusations of “weakness in the covenant,”
informing and surveillance, and various forms of censorship. Many of these
tools are employed primarily against persons who are somehow prominent
or appear to have leadership potential but do not seem easy for incumbents
to control, or against intellectuals and some businessmen engaged in Baha’i-related
businesses.

The prohibition of nominations and campaigning leads administrators
to feel a need for strict controls on Baha’i discourse, and often to the
avoidance of even mentioning leaders by name in public, which would be
construed as “backbiting.” The ban on campaigning can become a ban on visibility
or on any sort of critical thinking. A group of Californian believers began
a Baha'i magazine, Dialogue, in the mid-1980s. Although all the articles
were submitted for prepublication censorship to the National Spiritual
Assembly, a feeling of distrust toward the magazine’s left-liberal editorial
line grew up in Wilmette and in Haifa. In spring of 1988 the editors proposed
the publication of a 9-point reform program, “A Modest Proposal,” which
they submitted for censorship (Dialogue Ed. Board 1987). The article pointed
to the decline in conversions, argued against continued censorship, and
proposed term limits for N.S.A. members. They offered to (but did not)
make the document available beforehand to delegates to the national convention.
The response of N.S.A. secretary Robert Henderson and Firuz Kazemzadeh
was to accuse the editors of engaging in “negative campaigning.” The editors
were denounced at the 1988 national convention in Wilmette, and were interrogated
by N.S.A. members, who privately expressed concerns that the publication
of such a document might have prevented incumbents from being reelected,
and who raised suspicions that an independent magazine such as Dialogue
might prove a vehicle for gaining popularity in the community for the editors
such that they might get elected to the N.S.A. The editors, dismayed at
this barrage of what they felt were false charges and violations of due
process, and worried that Dialogue could not survive such official condemnation,
closed the magazine (Scholl 1997). The ban on campaigning leads to a situation
where a great deal of suspicion falls on any active intellectual or any
medium of communication not directly controlled by the N.S.A.

Baha’i administrators put a high premium on enforcing relative conformity
of views within the religion, taking steps to prevent the emergence of
self-conscious subcultures, which are seen as “parties” and as divisive.
Despite the clear ideological divide in the community between liberals
and conservatives apparent on email forums, Baha’is are forbidden to label
one another in this way, which effectively prevents liberals from complaining
about the conservative ascendancy. Although the early Baha’i faith had
a place in it for cohesive sub-groups of mystics and scholars, the contemporary
American community places a premium on homogeneity. Legitimate leadership
is held to be collective, though cults of personality do grow up around
Baha’i officials. Great suspicion attaches to any Baha’i teacher or lecturer
who is not an elected or appointed official and is thought to be “gaining
a following.” The story of one such popular Baha’i lecturer in the 1980s,
an immigrant from Iran whose name I have disguised, is told by a friend:

Under the auspices of the California Regional Teaching Committee he
began to do classes . . . on personal reading of the [sacred] Text. These
were very widely attended . . . One day after about 4 or 5 months a representative
of the CA RTC said that the N.S.A. was very concerned about the extreme
adulation being shown to [Ibrahim], some of which was expressed in letters
to the National Center. Tragically, this person said that the friends could
think what they wanted to, but to please just change what they wrote to
the N.S.A.. This was subterfuge, and this, combined with [Ibrahim’s] silence
on the matter instead of public renunciation of the adulation, was the
death knell. The classes were closed down. The rumor was that it was because
he was developing a following (personal communication, 16 April 1997).

While a Baptist preacher would have been rewarded for such activities
with his own congregation, the collectivist ethos of the American Baha’i
community demanded that this popular preacher actually be silenced for
his success.

Among important control mechanisms at the disposal of Baha’i leaders
is the removal of a believer's "administrative rights." By virtue of joining
the Baha’i faith, all adult believers have the right to vote directly for
members of their local spiritual assembly, and to vote at District Convention
for their delegate to the annual National Convention, who in turn elects
the members of the National Spiritual Assembly each year. Elections of
local and national assemblies are conducted according to the "Australian"
system, such that the nine persons garnering the most votes win. Every
five years, members of the world's National Spiritual Assemblies elect
the members of the Universal House of Justice. One's administrative rights
also include holding elective office and attendance at the nineteen-day
feast, a combination of worship service and church business meeting. Administrative
rights are required for participation in a Baha’i marriage ceremony, and
only those in possession of these rights may contribute money to the Baha’i
faith. Many conferences, and even some email forums, such as Bahai-Discuss,
are for Baha’is in good standing only. Local spiritual assemblies may not
revoke a believer's administrative rights, but may recommend that the National
Spiritual Assembly do so. For the most part the National Spiritual Assembly
takes such a step because a believer has repeatedly broken some Baha’i
law in a public way--participation in civil politics, belonging to another
religious organization, drinking alcohol, gambling, having an affair, homosexuality,
failure to abide by Baha’i marriage laws (which require the consent of
both parties' parents), or breaking a civil law of some seriousness (Hornsby
1983: 39-51). Those whose rights are removed can no longer serve as public
speakers in Baha'i settings, and, if writers, are usually unable to convince
Baha'i publishers to publish them. In some instances the N.S.A. has removed
rights for essentially political reasons, because a believer has publicly
or even privately criticized (Baha’is would say “slandered”) the National
Spiritual Assembly. A debate on this issue broke out in fall, 1995 on the
email network, Talisman, in which liberals pointed out that here the National
Spiritual Assembly acted as both plaintiff and judge. Most participants
defended the current procedures, on the grounds that Shoghi Effendi had
given this prerogative only to National Spiritual Assemblies and had specified
that assembly members who were party to a dispute with an individual Baha’i
should not recuse themselves in deciding that person’s fate.

Baha’is who publicly disagree (e.g. on email lists) with policies of
the Baha'i institutions can also simply be dropped from the rolls and declared
non-members, as happened to Canadian fantasy writer and editor Michael
McKenny in July, 1997. The most serious sanction of all is being declared
a “covenant breaker.” Although Baha’u’llah himself attempted to abolish
the practices of shunning and ritual pollution, contemporary Baha’is, like
members of the Watchtower and other cults, shun those who are excommunicated.
Only the head of the Baha’i faith can impose this punishment, so that this
authority now rests with the House of Justice. Whereas loss of voting rights
does not necessarily speak to one's spiritual well-being, being declared
a covenant-breaker makes one spiritually condemned. Baha’is are not to
speak to or have anything to do with covenant breakers (Hornsby 1983: 148-153).
Baha’i friends and family, including the spouse, cut the covenant breaker
off. Rank and file Baha’is take the obligation of shunning very seriously,
and being cast out from one’s support network can be devastating. This
punishment typically is imposed upon a Baha’i who has come into direct
conflict with the head of the religion. Most often this is because the
individual has put forth a competing claim and attempted to form a Baha’i
sect, or because a Baha’i has chosen to join or associate with such a sect.
Baha’i officials sometimes even declare ex-Baha’is covenant-breakers. In
late 1996 in New Zealand a new Baha’i who refused to terminate her friendship
with the daughter of a covenant breaker responded to pressure to do so
by formally withdrawing from the Baha’i religion. She was nevertheless
declared a covenant breaker (Universal House of Justice 1996d). Individuals
can also be shunned for expressions of conscience. Recently, the House
of Justice informed an American Baha’i liberal who had been critical of
the U.S. National Spiritual Assembly and had urged reform of Baha’i judicial
procedure that, should he continue on this path, "he and those with whom
he has been closely associated” would “find themselves in direct conflict
with the Covenant" (Universal House of Justice 1996b). In Baha'i terminology,
they were threatening to have these Baha’is shunned if they continued publicly
criticizing (“attacking and undermining”) Baha'i institutions or their
policies, even though they were not fomenting a schism. Threats to use
shunning for this purpose have increased with the rise of cyberspace.

Although Baha’i authorities do not appear to intervene in individuals'
secular businesses that are licit in Baha’i law, they do feel it their
prerogative to interfere with Baha’i businesses that pursue activities
directly related to the Baha’i faith. Thus, the making and marketing of
Baha’i-related jewelry and decorations is strictly monitored and individuals
can be ordered to desist from such activities. Music by Baha'i musicians
with Baha'i lyrics must be “reviewed.” The National Spiritual Assembly
claims the prerogative of telling private Baha’i publishers what Baha’i-related
books they may or may not publish, and even of ordering the deletion of
certain passages from both secondary and primary sources (MacEoin 1992:i).
During the build-up to the 1991 Baha’i World Congress in New York, the
National Spiritual Assembly encouraged all Baha’is to use its expensive
official travel agency, and some private Baha’i travel agents report that
the N.S.A. used threats of sanctions to pressure them not to offer competing,
lower-priced packages (personal communication, March 8, 1996, and enclosures).

Conformity of views and behavior is a strong value, and deviation from
stock phrases and ideas is looked upon with considerable suspicion (Johnson
1997). Despite the existence of New Age and liberal subcultures, the most
widespread approach in the American Baha’i community to scriptural exegesis
is literalism, as in fundamentalist Protestantism. Administrative practice
is based largely on a literalist reading of Shogh Effendi's English-language
letters concerning the development of the Western Baha'i communities. Although
Baha’is supposedly believe in the "unity of science and religion," in practice
most U.S. Baha’is put a literalist interpretation of scripture above science.
Recently Counselors have begun demanding assent to a literalist approach
to Baha'i scripture from liberal Baha’i academics, on pain of being shunned
(Birkland 1996).

The community employs a number of mechanisms to impose doctrinal and
behavioral conformity. One is to charge that a speaker with whom one disagrees
is weak in or actually undermining the Covenant by his or her words. This
tactic was employed to disrupt an academic conference on Baha'u'llah's
Most Holy Book held in Wilmette in March, 1995, where Baha’i intellectuals
presenting other than conservative views were sniggered at by some in the
audience and called, sotto voce, “covenant breakers” (personal communication,
1995). When, in the early 1990s, a left-liberal academic Baha'i took a
job at Carleton College, Counselor Stephen Birkland of Minneapolis privately
told Baha’is in the region to shun him as though he were a covenant breaker
(pers. communication, July, 1997). With the rise of unmonitored email forums,
where Baha’i liberals and other nonconformists are free to express themselves
publicly, the difficulty of maintaining a monopoly on the media for Baha’i
orthodoxy has increased. In response, the House of Justice encouraged Baha’is
who hear something they think out of the ordinary to challenge the speaker
to justify his or her statement with regard to the covenant (Universal
House of Justice 1996a). On the Talisman email forum, for instance, an
Iranian-American engineer alleged that Baha’i liberals constituted a sub-group
who were “attempting to undermine the covenant" (Talisman, April 1996).
This practice is similar to the Muslim principle that lay puritan volunteers
should go about "enjoining the good and forbidding the bad."

Informing, which is officially encouraged, forms another important control
mechanism. If accusations of covenant breaking do not cow the liberal,
the conservative Baha’i will often "report" the offender to the spiritual
assembly or to a member of the increasingly clergy-like Institution of
the Learned. In the U.S. this body consists of four North American counselors,
who command nearly 70 auxiliary board members, each of whom in turn has
an average of 60 assistants. This cadre of over 4,000 persons forms a significant
proportion of the active believers, and those concerned with “protection”
in particular vigorously monitor the community for their superiors. An
official will sometimes investigate the accused, and then meet with the
offender in an attempt to persuade him or her to orthodoxy. The authorities
keep files on those so reported, and sometimes blacklist them from prominent
committee assignments, appointment as assistants, and from speaking at
official Baha’i events and conferences.

Some anecdotes illustrate these practices. A Baha’i professional attended
meetings of a special-interest group for Baha’is, in the mid-1980s. At
one of these he suggested that the phrase "world government," employed
by Baha’is, was off-putting to most Americans and that Baha’is should find
a different terminology. (Conformity to the vocabulary of Shoghi Effendi
is an especially strong value, which this individual's remark violated).
He says that as a result, a member of the National Spiritual Assembly put
a fellow conference participant "under secret orders" to keep an eye on
him, but that the person recruited to spy on him later confessed this to
him (personal communication, 1996). It was alleged to me that this National
Spiritual Assembly member maintained a network of informers nationally.

Ross Summers, a health care professional in Seattle, relates that before
going on pilgrimage to the Baha’i shrines in Haifa in the 1970s, he saw
a newly-issued letter from the House of Justice that discouraged Baha’is
from reading covenant-breaker material, but did not absolutely forbid it.
Summers then went on pilgrimage, and while in Haifa casually mentioned
the letter's contents to another Baha’i pilgrim. Many Baha’is seek out
and destroy covenant-breaker materials in libraries, and believe it virtually
a mortal sin to possess such books or pamphlets (though the Baha'i institutions
discourage such extreme measures). So the Baha’i pilgrim disbelieved Summers'
remark, and was alarmed. Back in the U.S. on the East Coast, the offended
pilgrim contacted a former auxiliary board member and related the content
of the conversation. This man then passed the information on to a counselor.
Upon his return home to Seattle, Mr. Summers was contacted by a local auxiliary
board member, who sought a meeting in his home about his statement to the
pilgrim in Haifa. Mr. Summers accepted, and produced for the ABM the letter
from the Universal House of Justice, vindicating his remarks. Neither the
ABM nor the Counselors appear to have been aware of this letter previously.
Summers felt that having been essentially spied upon rather spoiled the
good feelings he had otherwise taken away from his pilgrimage (personal
comm., 26 April 1996). As these anecdotes suggest, to be a Baha’i is to
be under constant surveillance by one's community, and to be open to being
reported on if one says or does anything that seems to another Baha’i out
of the ordinary. The accused has no access to such reports and no right
to face his or her accuser. The system of using rank and file informers
has a venerable history in the Middle East.

Censorship

The Baha’i faith imposes a system of in-house censorship on all Baha’is
(Johnson 1997, Rifkin 1997), just as most Middle Eastern governments have
practiced censorship since the rise of printing in the nineteenth century.
Within the Baha’i religion, any piece of writing by a Baha’i author about
the religion intended for publication is to be vetted by elected Baha’i
officials at the appropriate level (local, national, international). This
requirement has provoked many conflicts between Baha’i officials and writers
over the years. Critics charge that it has led to a paucity of intellectually
acute Baha’i literature, to a lack of independent magazines and to the
withdrawal of a number of Baha’i writers. The innovative research findings
of the new generation of Baha’i academics has in particular brought them
into conflict with the conservatives in charge of the censorship apparatus.
Although Baha’i officials insist that the censorship requirement (“literature
review”) is “temporary,” it has already lasted nearly a century, and the
House of Justice has made it clear that it intends to keep it in effect
for a very long time. And although it is sometimes alleged that “review”
protects Baha'i authors, in practice even work submitted for review, such
as the Dialogue “Modest Proposal,” can attract sanctions. Prepublication
censorship has been among the primary techniques by which Baha’i authors
have been prevented from publishing on the controversies of contemporary
Baha’i history, and it is notable that the history of the community since
about 1950 has not been written about in any detail. Contemporary history
is off-limits as a subject because it would involve making value judgments
on present office-holders. It is often alleged by Baha'i conservatives
that “literature review” does not actually impede the publication of research
findings. But in 1988 the all-male House of Justice permanently suppressed
an academic paper arguing that women could serve on the UHJ, insisting
that only men could serve.

Although the emergence of email discussion groups and of the World Wide
Web pose profound challenges to the Baha’i system of internal censorship,
Baha’i institutions have moved aggressively to retain control in the new
environment. For instance, the major usenet list, Soc.Religion.Bahai, which
is the most prominent site for posting about the religion, is a moderated
list; its editors tend to be fairly conservative; and they report to a
local spiritual assembly and an auxiliary board member about policy, and
sometimes receive directives from counselors. They limit the posting of
criticisms of Baha’i institutions or any statements that too profoundly
challenge Baha’i orthodoxy (sometimes posting a few such criticisms and
then “calling a halt” to the discussion). When Baha’i Frederick Glaysher
began a campaign for an unmoderated usenet list, the rank and file Soc.Religion.Bahai
posters were overwhelmingly negative about the idea, and heavily voted
against it. (Admittedly Glaysher, a pugnacious poster, was not the ideal
publicist for the idea). One Baha'i wrote, “This is not a first amendment
issue, I must tell you. As I understand it, the Faith, our part in the
Covenant, implies that we remain silent and accept certain things that
we, as Americans, are culturally trained to disobey or complain about in
public.”

Baha'i authorities have dealt with email forums through post-publication
censorship, similar to that practiced by governments in the global South
such as Singapore. Electronic mail, while it allows open discourse, is
nevertheless also a useful tool in monitoring members of the religion,
given that informants forward unusual messages to the authorities. Many
Baha’i officials and ex-officials are given the opportunity to read these
communications (some of them personal). The following description of an
ex-official who monitored e-mail traffic in the community illustrates the
point:

This person . . . when he was an ABM [auxiliary board member] he developed
a lot of contacts who would say something like `this situation might interest
you. Do you want me to forward the info to you.’ And he always said yes.
And these people continue forwarding stuff to him. Consequently he claims
to get scads of mail – much of which he simply doesn't even read. But he
does read some, including [confidential messages] (personal communication,
23 September 1996).

Active officials receive many more such forwardings of confidential
material and reports. An example of how this system works concerns a woman
on the email forum, Bahai-Discuss, who argued to a believer in Florida
that in the future women would serve on the currently all-male Universal
House of Justice. The Florida woman faxed a copy of the offending email
message along with commentary to her opponent’s spiritual assembly, which
passed the material on to an auxiliary board member. Officials sometimes
act on such reports by summoning the offender to a meeting and silencing
him or her.

Even more serious charges can be made. In April, 1996, the counselors
launched charges against a number of prominent liberal posters to the Talisman@indiana.edu
listserv, alleging that the posters had "made statements contrary to the
Covenant" (Johnson 1997). The list had been a site for discussing issues
such as the need to contextualize Baha'i scripture in Middle Eastern history
in order to understand its implications, the potential limits on the infallibility
of the House of Justice, the possibility of women serving on that institution,
and the pros and cons of official “literature review.” Criticisms were
also voiced of past administration actions. The Baha'i authorities, viewing
such discussions as a form of public dissent and even “slander,” threatened
to have these individuals shunned if they continued posting on such subjects.
As a result, the list-owner closed the list down in May of that year, some
of the accused withdrew from the religion (the author among them [though
he maintains his private faith]), and others fell silent. A prominent academic
who had posted on Talisman received a threatening letter from Counselor
Stephen Birkland stating that

“the International Teaching Centre has asked me--with the knowledge
of the Universal House of Justice--to warn you that your promulgation of
views contrary to the Teachings was damaging to the Cause. If you were
to resume in any fashion this course of action, the effect would be to
bring you into direct conflict with the Covenant” (Birkland 1996).
This is a warning that the recipient will be declared a covenant breaker
if he does not fall silent. The archived email messages the counselor had
collected from the academic, which he sent along as examples of what would
not be tolerated, included statements that Baha’i metaphysics had a Neoplatonic
background, that contrary to `Abdu’l-Baha’s statements Socrates had not
conversed with Hebrew prophets in the Holy Land, and that the Universal
House of Justice was not infallible in its choice of building materials
for construction projects in Haifa. More serious was a private posting
the academic had accidentally sent out making light of the Wilmette administration,
expressing pleasure that it had so far not dared close down Talisman, and
batting down the idea broached by one angry liberal of forming an organization.
This posting was seen as evidence of a conspiracy.

Conclusion

Baha’i authorities exercise a great deal of control over discourse in
the community, maintaining a virtual monopoly on mass media with a Baha’i
audience. This control is felt necessary in part to prevent electioneering
and coalition-forming, which are formally barred (despite the informal
campaigning discussed above). It is perhaps not incidental that the controls
on electioneering and other forms of communication have the side effect
of ensuring that criticism of those in power cannot achieve wide circulation,
and that the incumbents who exercise that control are reelected every year.
Incumbents act aggressively against Baha’i owners of media who demonstrate
too much independence. They monitor the speech of individuals extensively
through a system of informants, and intervene behind the scenes to silence
dissidents with threats of sanctions. They require prepublication censorship
of everything Baha’is write about their religion. They intervene in the
private businesses of believers where they think the interests of the administration
are at stake. They tell private Baha’i publishers what books and even what
passages in books they may and may not publish. They employ the threats
of loss of administrative rights, humiliation in the national Baha’i newspaper,
and even of shunning, in order to control believers.

Having Baha’is inform on their co-believers allows the administration
to discover nonconformists who might not toe the party line, and to monitor
their activities. The system operates so as to maintain the “orthodox”
ideology in power and prevent the election to that institution of dissenters
through identifying them and ensuring that they do not become visible in
the community. The practice of informing creates a panopticon, as described
by Michel Foucault in his discussion of Jeremy Bentham's ideas on penal
reform (Foucault 1979). Bentham argued that putting the criminal constantly
under observation would deter him from further criminal acts, and would
even cause him eventually to internalize the sense of constantly being
watched, thus becoming permanently reformed. Conventional Baha’is often
never discover the informant system, since they never trip the wire that
would lead to their being informed on. The independent-minded, however,
usually discover it fairly early in their Baha’i careers, and then have
to decide whether they wish to live the rest of their lives in a panopticon.
This practice, like many other control mechanisms, discourages spiritual
entrepreneurship and keeps the religion from growing in the West.

Cole, Juan R.I.
1992 "Iranian Millenarianism and Democratic Thought in the Nineteenth
Century Middle East," International Journal of Middle East Studies 24:1-26.
Available on the World Wide Web at http://www-personal.umich.edu/~jrcole/bhconst.htm

1998 Modernity and the Millennium: The Genesis of the Baha’i Faith in
the Nineteen-Century Middle East. New York: Columbia University Press.

Wuthnow, Robert
1976 The Consciousness Reformation. Berkeley: University of California
Press.

+ Juan R. I. Cole is Professor of History at the University of
Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1003. He can be contacted by email at jrcole@umich.edu.
Note: This file contains the original diskette of the paper, and does not
reflect copy-editing and other late authorial and editorial changes in
the published article, to which it is therefore not quite identical. -
JRIC